


In Their Flowing Cups

by echolalaphile, MilesHibernus



Series: Journeys End [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: A Midsummer Night's Dream - Freeform, Basically 20 years of Crowley infecting a writer with plot bunnies, Bastardizing Shakespeare, Crowley complains to artists, Long-term friendships with immortal beings, Love's Labour's Lost, M/M, Macbeth - Freeform, Much Ado About Nothing, Pericles, Richard III - Freeform, Richard the Third was framed, The Tempest, Twelfth Night - Freeform, all's well that ends well, romeo and juliet - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-27
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-09-26 22:39:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20397301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/echolalaphile/pseuds/echolalaphile, https://archiveofourown.org/users/MilesHibernus/pseuds/MilesHibernus
Summary: Two households, both alike in dignity...wait no.My lord, if they were but a week married, they would talk themselves mad...not that either.Come hither, spirit: Set Caliban and his companions free; Untie the spell...getting closer.When you're friends with a writer, sometimes you end up in the work.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The working title of this was "Crowley and Shakespeare: Covert Drinking Buddies." We have possibly, finally, dealt with our Shakespeare/Good Omens feels. Also, jsyk, writing faux-Elizabethan dialogue for ~10 pages? _Tiring_. But it seemed necessary, so here we are.
> 
> As always, thank our beta elroi for making this the best it could be.

**1593**

Crowley was actually looking for William Shakespeare that night, but he hadn’t expected to find him already drunk and about to get pounded into a thin red paste.

The problem was that the man was drunk enough to forget that he shouldn’t mention _ why _ he was drunk, and by the time Crowley pushed through the tavern door several other patrons had heard Will lamenting the death of his lover.

His lover, who’d been stabbed in Deptford, and more to the point was another man.

Shakespeare was hanging by the front of his doublet from the ham-fist of a drover when Crowley walked up and snapped his fingers. The drover and his two friends froze where they stood and Crowley said, “Let him go.” The drover did. Shakespeare sagged and Crowley caught him. “Once we’ve left, you’ll wake,” the demon told the would-be assailants. “He was crying for his poor lost love, fair Bess that was, struck by a cart. And tonight you’ll dream of Hell.” They all nodded, faces blank.

Crowley turned his head to look at the landlord, who’d been watching all this with the face of a man who didn’t like it, but didn’t feel he could risk intervening either. “Must I settle his bill?”

The landlord made a quick but obvious assessment of Crowley’s clothing and said, “No, my lord, he paid when he came in.”

“Well enough.”

“Who are you? What have you done to them?” Shakespeare asked, as they moved back towards the door.

“Forget it,” said Crowley, and the poet did. “There you are,” Crowley went on. Shakespeare goggled at him. “Did forget we had an appointment, then? I have wine in my rooms.” They’d had an appointment only in the sense that Crowley wanted to find out a bit more about this new young playwright Aziraphale had been talking about.

“I know you not, sir.” Fortunately they were outside by then. Crowley snapped again.

“We’ve met, indeed. Do you wish to share my wine, or not?”

“_Yes_,” said Shakespeare fervently.

It was a bit of a walk to the rooms Crowley let,1 but the evening crowds didn’t impede them. Neither spoke until they were inside and the door latched. Shakespeare pulled away from Crowley’s support and said, “I thank you.” He sounded a tiny bit more sober.

“No need,” said Crowley, turning to the cabinet in which he kept a few bottles. There was plenty of wine, given how drunk the man already was, and no need to offer anything worth saving. He selected a bottle and a pair of clay cups and turned back around to find Shakespeare on his knees. “Let me thank you,” said the poet.

Crowley set his burdens down on the table and let out his breath. Shakespeare’s eyes were fixed on his face. Crowley took a step closer. “Ask me again when you’re sober of both wine and grief,” he said, and the look that flashed over Shakespeare’s face couldn’t decide whether it was relief or disappointment. “Come on, I hate to drink alone,” said Crowley, and held out his hand. 

The poet took it and climbed to his feet. Crowley suspected it was going to be a long night.

***

"We looked alike," said Will brokenly. It was, indeed, proving to be a long night, and they’d progressed to first names hours ago.2 "We were two halves. Two bodies and one heart."

Crowley plucked the man’s empty cup from his hand and picked up the bottle, which he'd stopped bothering to be subtle about keeping full. "I know not how to lose such a thing," he said, quietly. He poured.

“What’s his name, then?” asked Will, and Crowley startled enough to nearly spill the wine. 

“Whose name?”

“The one you cannot lose because you do not have him.” 

Blessed humans, always perceptive at the worst times. Well, it wasn’t as if he couldn’t make sure the man failed to remember in the morning. “You know him: Master Fell.”

Will made owlish eyes at him. “I see. He is a most enthusiastic patron. Is it that he would hate you?”

Not a bad assumption, for this day and age. “Nay, only that we are under constraint. And he more than I.” All Crowley was risking was death. Not that he was eager for it, but better that than let the angel Fall.

“I would not have thought it,” the poet said solemnly.

Crowley felt his lips twisting. “There you are not alone.”

"He's not your twin, he's your mirror," Will pronounced, with the precise enunciation of the greatly drunk.

"He would like it not that you say so," said Crowley, and pushed the cup across the table. "Drink well, you'll feel better."

"No," said Will, "I won't." But he picked up the cup anyway and drained it at a draught. Crowley didn’t even sigh, just gave the man’s liver another encouraging prod. 

***

After that it became a bit of a habit.

Crowley spent a lot of time in London in those years. Hell approved of Bess because the Church didn’t like a woman being in charge, and of course his Adversary was based there as well. It meant he had a lot of time to spend drinking with Will.

**1594**

“Nay, nay, but _ think _ on’t!” Crowley insisted. “He wished to marry her for his claim to the throne, but if she were no bastard, neither were her brothers, and the elder king of England. But Richard had no reason, I tell thee true.”

“Except to remain king himself,” said Will, but doubt wavered in his voice.

“Tell me then that a man so thick in cunning as thou wouldst have him—” he waved at the manuscript “—could not have made much of being the uncle of a boy-king? It would have been foolish of him to kill them, and whatever else he was no fool.”

“It matters not,” said Will pragmatically. “I am fond of my head and would not part with it for writing treason.”

“A palpable hit,” said Crowley.

**1595**

"Thou know'st he loves thee," Will folded his arms on the table. "Thou’rt being foolish."

"He loves his _books_," Crowley muttered into his tankard. "He maketh of his house a—a little academe, contemplative of this poem or that philosophy. He’ll speak sweetly to me—of his latest folio, or _thy latest play_, or a new bottle of ink. I’m a trusted companion, but only that." And lucky to have that much, if he were honest with himself, but he wasn’t in the mood for honesty.3

"I've seen his eyes when he looks on thee," Will countered. "Surely thou hast noticed?"

"_He _ hath not," snapped Crowley, then covered his outburst with a long pull from his beer. Will looked at him a long moment, then rested a hand on his shoulder.

"Someday he'll realise, I have no doubt."

"Hah," Crowley muttered, without heat. "Yea, in four hundred years, or thereabouts."

"A hundred only, to be sure," said Will, amused. "He's no block."

"Thou’rt drunk," said Crowley.

"Doth make me blind?"

"Not blind, only _ optimistic_."

"Nay, not so. Drink is an anchor, dragging to the very depths." He illustrated with an expansive gesture that didn’t pour wine on his head only because the cup was suddenly empty.

Crowley looked at him over the tops of his glasses. It was a risk, but not much of one. "How is it, to say such things without thought? I’d think thy wit would tire, so hot and fast it speeds."

"I was born under a rhyming planet," said Will, and giggled.

**1596**

The man talking to Will had Ligur’s mark on him, and Crowley’s heart stuttered.

Will caught sight of Crowley and waved a greeting, but his attention was on his conversational partner, who to human sight was quite worth looking at. To Crowley’s eyes, his soul was riddled through with rot. And there was nothing he could _ do_, not directly.

Crowley searched through the patrons hastily for the one who’d be least amenable to Ligur’s pet’s approaches. It was simple enough to pluck the man’s lust loose from Will and attach it to the other, and if he’d fixed himself on a target who wouldn’t give him two words together, that was hardly Crowley’s fault, was it?

The pet stuttered to a halt in the middle of a sentence and walked away from Will with barely a word. Will’s expression went from interest, to confusion, to anger, and when Crowley was close enough for speech Will growled, “What _ dost _ thou?” Crowley grimaced. Perhaps he hadn’t been subtle.

“I’ll explain, but not here,” he said. Better to get Will out of the pool of targets, just in case. Will looked mulish and Crowley said, “Please. I am sorry, only please let us go.”

Will’s jaw clenched, but he nodded.

In the street, Crowley said, “He’s not what he seems. He makes a fair show, meaning only deceit.”

“What sort of deceit?” Will asked, sounding grumpy.

“He craveth the pain of others, and would have thine,” said Crowley grimly. Ligur had not had to give the man that; all he’d done was make him believe he deserved to have what he wanted. “Someday he will kill—murder’s as close to lust as smoke to flame, for the likes of him.”

“How dost thou _ know _ this?”

Crowley stopped walking and turned to face Will fully. “I will not say I would not lie to thee, thou knowest that I must, but I am at least a plain-dealing villain and I do not lie in this. When he hangs, thou’lt thank me. An I were free to do my will I’d eat his heart in the marketplace.” 

Will tried to meet his eyes. Crowley gazed back, and after a moment Will looked down and sighed. “I trust thee.”

“Thou ought not,” said Crowley, “but come, give me thy hand if we be friends. I shall make it up to thee.”

“Oh, thou shalt?” Will clasped the offered hand for a moment, half a smile on his face.

Crowley rolled his eyes. “Tonight the beer’s all mine. Or the wine, as thou like'st.”

“Well enough.” A few steps later, he said, “Thou must tell me more sometime of how thy will’s constrained. Thou seem’st to do as thou likest, mostly.”

“Mostly I _ like _ to do as I’m _ meant _to do. But betimes some other of my kin hath duties of his own, or my master would fain dispatch me to special commission.” Not that Crowley had spoken directly to Satan in a long, long time, but Beelzebub’s orders were much the same thing.

"Tell me about thy master, what's he like?"

Crowley opened his mouth and shut it again. 

"Fearsome," he said at last. “Bright as dawn, but fearsome. He speaketh but rarely, yet we mark every word.” It was as close as he’d ever come to acknowledging that Will knew he wasn’t human.

***

“Tell me why thou wouldst not have him know that we are friends,” said Will one night, apropos of nothing. _ Him_, with no other identifier, always meant Aziraphale.

Crowley sighed. “He would have it that our...spheres overlap but little, his and mine, and there is no harm maintaining such a semblance.” Besides, he rather enjoyed the occasional friendship that did not depend on the angel.

“Yet you two are much alike, and if there are others like you I have never met them.”

"Oh, our families have long been at feud," said Crowley, outwardly easy. "His would happily see me dead, and mine would kill him when he would not be suborned. Someday they’ll take to the streets with swords in hand." _ All the streets_, he thought. _ Every single one. The world, and all the kingdoms thereof. _

Will's eyebrows went up. "Yet he's the light of thy world."

Crowley shrugged. "My bright angel." Let the man take it for a flattering metaphor. "We met by chance. It would have been better for me to have never spoken to him, and better for him to have discovered me to his masters, but I spoke and he kept silent and...here we are, withal."

"It's dramatic," said Will.

"_Oh _ no," said Crowley severely. "Put that from thy mind. It's not grist for thy mill."

"As thou say’st" Will replied, and only some months later would Crowley realise that the phrase wasn't agreement as such.

**1598**

When he thought on it later, it occurred to Crowley that he should not have kept pushing, but at the time he was too caught up in his dislike of Gabriel to realize he’d gone too far. The angel stopped walking abruptly and Crowley’s feet took an extra step before he could master them and turn back. “They may send me where they will and what _you _think of it is no matter,” Aziraphale said coldly. “When next I speak to them, I shall _ ask _for some emissary to Asia. There must be some khan in need of a more luxuriant beard.” He made to stalk away.

“Angel,” Crowley protested, but Aziraphale wheeled on him.

“Not _ one _ word more, Crowley, I can_not _ endure your tongue!”

The conflict between wanting to placate the angel and wanting to make a lewd remark held Crowley speechless for long enough that Aziraphale got well out of easy reach.

Behind him, someone cleared their throat. Crowley turned, startled, to see Will leaning against the wall, arms crossed and eyes sparkling.

“Thou hast lost his heart, my friend,” said Will cheerfully.

Crowley snarled at him but it was half-hearted and Will clearly knew it. “Yea, thou may’st well say so,” Crowley conceded after a moment. “He rolls false dice whene’er we play for it, and so I cannot win.”

“We’ll drown thy sorrows,” said Will, then slyly, “or bury them? I am sober, you see, of both wine and grief.” His tone made Crowley look at him more closely. Will raised his eyebrows; Crowley knew sincerity when it was waved in his face and for a moment he considered it.

But instead he manufactured a grin of his own and reached out to clap Will on the shoulder. “Thou’rt too good for the likes of me,” he said. Will’s smile turned wry. “Let’s drink.”

**1599**

Crowley took a long pull from his tankard and smacked it down on the table. "York."

“Aye?”

“Thine invention’s hard at work, is it?”

Will grinned. “Perhaps I put a bit of a shine on the man.”

“A _bit_?” spluttered Crowley. “He was a corpulent ass. Died of apoplexy in his armor before a sword could touch him.”

"Thou speak’st as though thou hadst met him," said Will, looking at him sidelong.

"Thou’rt drunk," said Crowley.

"Doth make me blind?"

Crowley grinned in turn and waved to the barman. “Fanciful, perhaps.”

**1600**

When Crowley arrived, Will wasn’t ready. He was at his desk, writing with an intensity Crowley recognized; if he were interrupted, he’d bite. Instead Crowley sat on the least-uncomfortable bench until the frenzy died. “What is it?” Crowley asked, and smirked when Will startled.

“I have told thee not to do that!”

“Wouldst have me deny my nature?”

“Thou art natural, indeed.” Will put his quill down. “And wilt like it not.”

Crowley groaned theatrically. “I have told thee, thy melancholy need not tread the boards.”

“Master Fell will praise it to very heaven.”

"Master Fell praiseth many things he ought not."

“He praiseth thee.”

“_Quod erat demonstrandum_. Well, if it’s to be a gloomy one, I’ll render myself back to the sulphurous flames of Hell. Send for me when thou'rt on to something more comical.”

“So low thy master sendeth thee! I’d thought thou wouldst have sought him in the wood.”

“Hah,” muttered Crowley.

“Let Hell and Hamlet mind themselves a while,” said Will. “Let them alone and have a drink with me.”

**1601**

“He cares not for me. He loves—them.” Crowley waved an arm expansively, indicating the world outside the pub. “People.” 

Will quirked an eyebrow over his beer. “As thou dost. Don’t feign with me—” as Crowley drew breath to protest. “I’ve seen thee. Thy profession may be chaos and discord, but I’ve seen thee care for people. I won’t announce it widely, never fear, but between us, thou lovest them in turn.”

“Not like him,” Crowley muttered, knowing Will would hear the missing words as clearly as the spoken. Aziraphale hadn’t, in the various discussions they’d had of the relative merits of human nature. The angel had even started quoting it back to him. “I know you love them not, Crowley, not like me, but—”

Crowley groaned and dropped his head on his folded arms. “Thou’lt write this one onto the stage as well, I know it. What shall I give thee not to?”

Will grinned at him. “Anything I desire?”

Crowley turned his head and glared warily up at his friend. “Name it.”

“Do not desire me not to write thee into my plays.” 

Crowley barked a laugh, sitting up again. “This is to give me a dog, and in exchange desire of me my dog again. Have it as thou wilt, I well know I couldn’t stop thee anyway.”

Will clapped his shoulder and took a long pull of his beer. “I’ll make it subtle. And comical, withal.”

***

“Subtle,” Crowley said to the stage, leaning on the half-wall between the groundling area and the benches. The rest of the crowd, thankfully including Aziraphale, had long since left the theatre.

“Subtle,” agreed Will equably. Crowley turned to glare at him. “Come now, Crowley, they are so unbalanced in strength. He’ll not compound it until long past the time thou’lt have ceased to mind if he should.”

“Four hundred years,” Crowley muttered. “I’d bet thee an angel4, but by then thou’lt be long in thy grave.”

“Come see me in Hell, then,” said Will merrily, “And I'll collect from thee there. A hundred years, Crowley, at the outside. I told thee once, he’s no block, and I’ll be sworn to’t.”

**1603**

“I am new-come from Stratford,” Will announced as he sat, “and would drink till I remember it not.”

“Thy lady wife doth poorly?” Crowley asked.

“_She _ doth well enough. Her maid liketh me not, and i’faith I cannot blame her. Were I of a mind I could end a happy household, and 'tis painful to live on sufferance.” He grimaced.

Crowley, who’d expected something like this, was well-prepared and pushed a full tankard over. “‘Tis like that, then.”

“Three children Anne had of me, and desired no more. We can pass the time, but I am not part of her, nor she of me.” He drank, and set the tankard down. “I shall leave her the second-best bed. They sleep in it—when I am not there.”

“Thou think’st not to die so young, I hope.” Will made a face and Crowley winced for the reminder of his son, only eleven and never any older. They never talked about it, but Crowley suspected the boy’s death was part of the reason Will and Anne were content to live so much apart.

“And what of thee?” Will asked. “How doth Master Fell?”

Crowley wasn’t above playing up his woes as a distraction, so he said, “It’s all one. Better I should love some bright particular star, ‘tis no higher than he is above me.”

Will coughed into his tankard. “Now whose wit doth speed too fast? I’d near think thou had spent the time since our last drink in conning that.”

“Perhaps I hung thy rhyming planet in its sphere,” Crowley smirked, and drank.

**1606**

Crowley had been out of London for nearly two months, and he’d had to ride a horse. It lifted his mood somewhat when Will was visibly glad to see him, but he wasn’t much good at hiding being out of sorts. The third time he wanted to snap at an innocuous remark, he sighed instead and said, “Forgive me, I am sour. I’ll leave thee.” He made to get up.

“Sit, and tell me what rides thee.”

A moment passed, and then, “Witches,” said Crowley with venom.5

Will looked nonplussed.

“Tell me why anyone would think to find power in newt’s eyes,” Crowley went on. “The tongues of _ dogs_. _ Why _?”

Will shrugged.

“_Just _ so!” said Crowley. “It is nonsense. An one would fain do magic, only do it and leave a poor spirit unmolested with foul concoctions. They had _ baboon’s blood, _ and no Power on Earth knows where they got it.” He finished his cup and filled it again. “What’s worse, then, shall I tell thee?” Will made a gesture Crowley chose to interpret as agreement because he was on a roll now, like a cart down a steep hill. “They thought to frighten me. _ Me_. With their, their _ lizards’ legs_. Know not who I _ am_?”

“A poor spirit, like to be affrighted by eye of newt,” said Will, and laughed when Crowley glared at him.

“The merest sprite would not be overawed so,” Crowley told him haughtily. “Such things would not frighten an _ imp_. It cannot be done.”

“Mmmm,” said Will, tapping his mug on the table. “I accept thy challenge.”

“Thou,” said Crowley, “art a _ menace_.”

**1611**

“Oh Crowley, lend this one a helping hand. Carry a message, a package, my kind regards. Thy charge is executed, yet there’s more work.” Crowley leant heavily back in his chair and made a sour face. “Am I his slave, to dispose as he liketh?” 

Will laughed and said, “Say it again when thou’st denied him anything, and I may believe thee.” Crowley glowered, but Will hadn’t taken that sort of thing seriously in a decade or more and went on, in a fair imitation of Aziraphale, “Oh, I know not what I’ll do!” Then at a lower pitch, “Fear not, I shall return ere your pulse twice beat.”

Crowley buried his face in his hands. “I sound _ not _ like that.”

“Thou dost, withal,” said Will, and his smile turned rueful. “Think’st thou I know not _ why _ thou dost? I have been in love.” 

“I know,” Crowley conceded. He toyed with his cup for a few moments. “Next week I must away, on special business, and I know not when I return. He’ll have to make his own hay.”

“Canst tell me?”

“Better not, my friend.” Will shrugged and sipped his own drink. “I do not like to leave London,” said Crowley, and it felt like admitting far too much.

“Thou likest not to leave him.”

“Or thee.” Will looked surprised and Crowley raised his eyebrows. “I would not like mischance to come to thee while I cannot prevent it.”

Will chuckled. “Fear not. I have but to mention to him that I’m burdened with some difficulty, and it’s solved. I would not have noted it, were he not so careful to ensure the help comes always in some way for which he cannot be thanked.”

“Not all mischance comes so slowly as to be noted before it arrives.”

“Crowley, I thank thee, but thou canst not shield me from—”

“—the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to?” Crowley drawled.

Will raised an eyebrow but replied, “Quite so. I am a mortal man. Mischance will come, or it will not, and meanwhile thou hast thy business, and may not anger thy master.”

“I may be gone years.”

“I shall miss thee.”

“And I thee.”

“I have always wondered how it came that the likes of thee should be my friend,” said Will.

Crowley said, “I admit, I had not intended it. I meant only to see this poet, this new playwright that my angel praised so. But thou hadst lost—much.”

Will’s grief for Kit was worn like river stones, but it shadowed his face. “And so I had. Well. My lady in Stratford and I have come to agreement, with the playhouses so often closed.” 

“And is there much to drink in Stratford?” Crowley asked.

“Enough,” said Will, and offered his cup in toast.

**1616**

Crowley was in Italy when the news of Will’s death in Stratford reached him. He was technically at liberty, having incited the Croatian pirates to sufficient excesses to keep everyone busy for the next several years, but suddenly the idea of going back to London had lost a bit of its luster. No harm in making sure things continued to go well6 in the foothills for a while. He could use a bit of extra credit Downstairs anyway.

If it hadn’t been for the Official Commendation for the outlawing of Christmas in 1647 it might have been another fifty years before he went back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1The inn was called The White Hart, which didn’t distinguish it much.back
> 
> 2More precisely, they had progressed to “Will” and “Crowley”.back
> 
> 3He was almost never in a mood for honesty. It tended to make him break out in hives.back
> 
> 4An [Old Money](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C2%A3sd) coin worth ten shillings or half a pound, and can he be blamed for suggesting that amount?back
> 
> 5In this case, purely a figure of speech.back
> 
> 6That is, badly.back


	2. Chapter 2

It was a quiet afternoon, the sort they’d had a lot of since coming to their Understanding.1 Aziraphale was seated at one end of the sofa, reading something or other, and Crowley was sprawled across the rest of it, legs hanging over the arm, head pillowed on the angel’s lap, basking in the sensation of Aziraphale’s free hand combing through his hair. 

Crowley was nearly asleep when Aziraphale’s hand abruptly stopped moving, and he closed the book with a snap. Crowley opened one eye and saw the angel looking down at him with an expression made of amusement, chagrin, and wonder.

“‘S’it?” Crowley made to sit up, but Aziraphale’s hand tightened slightly in his hair and he sank back down willingly enough. “Angel?”

Aziraphale opened his mouth, hesitated a moment, and then said, in his quotation voice, “Thou hast said to me a thousand times, thou never shouldst love humans like to me.”

“And all those sayings will I overswear,” Crowley replied, sitting up; this time the angel let him, since there was kissing involved. “Just noticed that one now, did you?”

Aziraphale made a grumpy noise against his mouth, and Crowley laughed suddenly. “Damn.” 

“What is it, my love?”

“The only time I’ll ever be annoyed not to be able to get back into Hell. I won that bet after all.”

Crowley loved Aziraphale’s indignant face.2 “Bet with whom?” 

“Angel, we were at the _actual_ _premiere_ of _Romeo and Juliet_, and you’re asking bet with whom? He said you’d get it in a hundred years or less, I said four hundred. And, well.”

As has been previously noted, Aziraphale was a very intelligent being, certain blind spots notwithstanding. After a few moments of mentally flicking through quotations and coming to the sensible conclusion that there were too many to be quickly catalogued, Aziraphale sighed and made a halfhearted attempt to hide the twitching of his lips. “I’ll just add the Complete Works to the list, shall I?”

“What list?” Crowley asked warily.

“The list of cultural artifacts directly or indirectly inspired by you complaining to artists that I was an oblivious idiot,” said Aziraphale, his eyes dancing. “It’s quite a long list, I’ve got it written somewhere, I'm beginning to suspect it encompasses almost the entirety of Anglophone arts and letters—”

“Shut up,” interjected Crowley. The tips of his ears were pink, which given their largely voluntary physiology was basically an admission.

“I will fetch you a toothpicker now from the furthest inch of Asia,” said Aziraphale, and in anyone who wasn’t an angel you’d have had to call his tone gleeful.

“Angel.”

“My hour is almost come, when I to sulphurous and tormenting flames must render up myself. Always so dramatic, my dear.”

“Angel, I swear—”

“Thy charge exactly is performed, but there’s more work.”

“You’re just embarrassed I was always the one splitting the pines.”3

"This is thy negligence: still thou mistakest, or else committ'st thy knaveries wilfully.”

"_Demon_,” said Crowley.

“If they do see thee—” and suddenly the mirth drained from Aziraphale’s face. “—they will murder thee.”

"Any more questions about why I don't like the gloomy ones?"

“Yes, well,” said Aziraphale. “One could wish he hadn’t got quite so enthusiastic about that part.”

Crowley huffed, but there wasn’t any real feeling behind it. “He was writing for the groundlings, they loved that sort of stuff. Wasn’t a dry eye in the house, I recall.”

“Including yours, dear boy.”

“You must have been imagining things.” 

Aziraphale kissed him again and Crowley melted into it. A few minutes later Aziraphale said, “Puck and Ariel, of course. Romeo, if all that about bright angels means anything, though I am _ not _ a fourteen-year-old maiden.”

“We’re six _ thousand _years old, angel, it wouldn’t matter if she were ninety.”

“Quite true. Oh my, _ Beatrice_. That you were a man, indeed.”

“Always the smartest one in the room, Beatrice. I’ll take it. Pretty sure I’m Viola too.”

“Rosalind? More than common tall.”

“Might be. Not Kate, though, met him just after.”

“Nor did I tame you,” said Aziraphale, looking a little offended at the thought.

"Didn't you?" Aziraphale's expression complicated itself. Crowley breezed on, “Tried to tell him he had Dickon all wrong but it wasn’t like he had a lot of choice on that one.”

“Well. Elizabeth did have her reasons.”

“She wasn’t bad as kings go.”

“I did wonder why you suddenly vanished for the middle half of the century, you know. You said you’d only be gone a few years.”

“Couldn’t face London with no one to complain to. He was a good friend, even though venting to him meant seeing my woes writ large before the whole damn city. He lent elegance to my suffering, you have to admit.”

“What about the sonnets?”

“‘My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun,’ absolutely he got that line from me,” quoted Crowley with a grin, dodging Aziraphale’s playful swat. “Seriously though, I think he came up with most of the pining himself. And I sure wasn’t behind the ones about having babies so there’d be another generation of pretty girls.”

“Pining,” said Aziraphale, and suddenly looked stricken.

“What, angel?”

"_I am to wait, though waiting so be hell/Not blame your pleasure be it ill or well. _...oh, Crowley, when I think of all the time I wasted.”

Crowley smiled at him, and there were thousands of beings who wouldn’t have believed that face could produce such an expression. He sang, softly, to the tune they’d used in Will’s theater. Aziraphale hadn’t heard Crowley sing in centuries; his voice was sweet and true, if untrained. “_O angel mine, where are you roaming? O stay and hear, your true love's coming, that can sing both high and low. Trip no further, pretty sweeting. Journeys end in lovers' meeting, every wise man's son doth know _. He wrote that song to remind me, I think. That you’d come around. And you’re here now.”

“_We _ are here,” said Aziraphale. “I think that deserves a toast.” He extricated himself from Crowley’s embrace and went to fetch wine and glasses. Crowley sat and tried not to look completely besotted while the angel poured.

From the look on Aziraphale’s face, he failed.

Aziraphale sat back down and handed over a glass. “To Will,” he said simply.

“To Will,” said Crowley, and they drank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1The Arrangement being out of date by this point.back
> 
> 2To be clear, Crowley loved all Aziraphale’s faces, including the ones that weren’t human.back
> 
> 3Not at all true, but the balance did fall a little more heavily on Crowley’s side.back


End file.
